Tuesday, April 05, 2016

Stem Cell Breakthrough: Embryos Needn't Be Killed

Once again, the purveyors of embryonic death have been dealt a blow by researchers developing multiple, unrelated techniques to use adult bone marrow and fat cells to regenerate and repair a variety of damaged body tissue types.

"This technique is a significant advance on many of the current unproven stem cell therapies, which have shown little or no objective evidence they contribute directly to new tissue formation."-- John Pimanda, Associate Professor, University of New South Wales (UNSW)

The clinical trial found that end-stage heart failure patients treated with stem cells harvested from their own bone marrow had 37 percent fewer cardiac events than those who received a "dummy" placebo.

If further studies are successful, stem cell therapy may one day offer an alternative to current treatments for end-stage heart failure, such as heart transplantation and left ventricular assist device therapy, the researchers said.

The study was published online April 4 in The Lancet journal and presented simultaneously at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) in Chicago.

"This would be considered a huge success because this much of a reduction has not been shown with any other (cell) therapy," said Dr. Amit N. Patel, director of the clinical regenerative medicine program in the University of Utah Department of Surgery.

Here's how the therapy, which is called Ixmyelocel-T, is carried out: The researchers remove about three tablespoons of bone marrow from the hip bone while the patient is lightly sedated. The cells in the bone marrow then grow in an instrument called a bioreactor for two weeks, producing a "soup" of cells containing certain types of stem cells and immune cells that can help remodel tissue and reduce inflammation, Patel said. Finally the researchers use special catheters to identify the weakest parts of the heart and inject the soup into these areas.

In the year after the injection, 20.3% of the patients in the cell therapy group experienced an adverse event such as infection or stroke, compared with 41.8% of the placebo group. "It was surprising that the (placebo) patients did significantly worse," Patel said. This could have been because they underwent the same invasive procedures as the treatment group, but did not receive the same potentially beneficial cell therapy, which could have anti-inflammatory effects that decreased adverse events, he said.

Therapies based on "induced multipotent stem" (iMS) cells could be tested in human trials as early as next year, according to Australian researchers.

While ES [embryonic stem] cells are natural, obtained from early-stage embryos, iPS cells are made by reprogramming adult cells. But both run the risk of generating cancerous tumours, and iPS cells are created using genes injected by viruses, which is clinically unacceptable.

The iMS cells which are the focus of the new research reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences have a more limited capacity but claimed to be safer than ES or iPS cells.

Stem cell therapies capable of regenerating any human tissue damaged by injury, disease or ageing could be available within a few years, following landmark research led by UNSW Australia researchers.

The repair system, similar to the method used by salamanders to regenerate limbs, could be used to repair everything from spinal discs to bone fractures, and has the potential to transform current treatment approaches to regenerative medicine.

Study lead author, haematologist and UNSW Associate Professor John Pimanda, said the new technique, which reprograms bone and fat cells into induced multipotent stem cells (iMS), has been successfully demonstrated in mice.

The technique developed by UNSW researchers involves extracting adult human fat cells and treating them with the compound 5-Azacytidine (AZA), along with platelet-derived growth factor-AB (PDGF-AB) for approximately two days. The cells are then treated with the growth factor alone for a further two-three weeks.

AZA is known to induce cell plasticity, which is crucial for reprogramming cells. The AZA compound relaxes the hard-wiring of the cell, which is expanded by the growth factor, transforming the bone and fat cells into iMS cells. When the stem cells are inserted into the damaged tissue site, they multiply, promoting growth and healing.